‘Edefy’ app aims to be Uber for education, supporting parents wanting to exit public schools

Families looking to leave public education now have a new option: Edefy, an app designed to “connect families directly with teachers,” according to its founder.

The app “lets families group their children and choose teachers directly for personalized, small group education” in a pod school model, Edefy’s website explains.

“Create or Join Hybrid or Full Time pods. Everyone Can Pod School.”

“I was just very frustrated with public education, and wanted to break its infrastructure and logistics monopoly, and from experience saw that the pod school model created a better system for children and teachers,” he told Fox News Digital.

“In-person education requires a three-sided marketplace … essentially an Airbnb for education space meets Uber, to connect families directly with teachers. It was quite the technical challenge.”

‘Community experience and academic results’

The app defines pod schooling as a “professional homeschool” combining “the per-student personalization and family-like learning community of homeschool cooperatives with the professional instruction, guidance, and assessment abilities of a trained and qualified teacher.”

Families can activate a pod with as few as eight students, maxing out at a limit of 12 students per teacher, according to the app’s website.

“I have been blessed to see our children, our nieces and nephews, and the children of our friends, thriving in a pod school hosted on our family property since 2010,” said James (Jimmy) Bisenius on the app’s “Company” page.

“Separately, after five years of investing professionally in high-end private education overseas, I was surprised to realize that with all the fancy buildings and talented administration staff, it couldn’t beat the community experience and academic results of the pod model being used back home.”

After the COVID-19 pandemic, Bisenius and his wife began working with parents and teachers to facilitate their meetings at “third-party host sites.”

“While the outcomes were again fantastic for families and educators, we were forced to develop special-purpose technology to help solve the year-to-year logistics challenges associated with this model of learning.”

The app is self-funded, and Bisenius emphasizes his goals for it to be “owned and operated by parents, not private equity or institutional investors.”

Education reform advocate Corey DeAngelis credited the app with the potential to revamp “the entire factory model school system.”

“Public schools spend about $20,000 per student per year,” he said. “Imagine if that money followed the child with school choice and a teacher set up a microschool with 12 students. That teacher could pull in $240,000 in revenue each year, make more money than in the public school system, and have the freedom to teach without bureaucratic red tape.”